


Brother where have we fallen (and how do we get out!)

by TheAngryKimchi



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Brother Feels, Deadpool References, EVERYTHING GOES WRONG, Established Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, F/M, M/M, Malec, Marvel References, Mentioned Simon Lewis, Mild Language, Parabatai Feels, Sassy Alec Lightwood, after season 2, clace, demon hunting, established Clary Fray/Jace Wayland - Freeform, idk how to tag, parabatai adventure time, parabatai bonding time, parabatai-centric, some bad-ish things happen to them but they are Shadowhunters so everything is ok, some innuendos, they are both idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 07:09:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13049064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAngryKimchi/pseuds/TheAngryKimchi
Summary: "Go hike the woods to find a demon you said. It will be fun you said."Alec rolled his eyes for the umpteenth time this day, taking a deep breath through his nose to keep his annoyance in check."Parabatai bonding time you said." his brother continued griping as they made their way through the thick forest at the outskirts of Alicante, the occasional scurrying sound from small animals reaching their ears."Jace, one more word and I swear to Raziel, I'll push you off the edge of the next cliff we'll come across."In which Jace and Alec have a mission on the mountains and things don't go exactly as expected.





	Brother where have we fallen (and how do we get out!)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello y'all, I'm Kimchi! This is my first ever contribution to this fandom -and the first long thing I've written in quite sometime- and I hope you like it as much as I loved writing it. It isn't beta'd and English isn't my native language; so, any mistakes are my own.
> 
> Just some bonding time between brothers, because God knows they need that and some cute Malec on the side.
> 
> Also, this one is a gift for my soulmate, my real life parabatai, whom without I'd probably be locked up somewhere losing my mind. She loves Jalec with all her heart, but this is the closest I could go to that relationship or else Magnus would come to hit me repeatedly on the head with a stick. Actually, if that could get Magnus to me, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea, hmmm...yeah, no, not worth it. XD
> 
>  
> 
> For you big sis, the Alec to my careless Jace ♥

"Go hike the woods to find a demon you said. It will be fun you said."

Alec rolled his eyes for the umpteenth time this day, taking a deep breath through his nose to keep his annoyance in check.

"Parabatai bonding time you said." his brother continued griping as they made their way through the thick forest at the outskirts of Alicante, the occasional scurrying sound from small animals reaching their ears.

"Jace, one more word and I swear to Raziel, I'll push you off the edge of the next cliff we'll come across." Alec warned, fingers tightening around his bowstring when a flock of birds left their perch from one of the trees.

"Oh? And why’s that, Alec?" Jace taunted, following behind his brother through the annoying shrubbery of the forest, but Alec didn't deign him with an answer, too focused on the path infront of them and the rustling sound that came slowly closer. "Is it maybe, probably, _possibly_  because you know what a great mistake you made?"

But even the most patient person had its breaking point and Alec was miles away from being patient after the day he had. "It isn't only _my_  fault everything went wrong, okay? It's partly your fault, too!" Alec halted in his steps turning around to glare full force at his brother. "If you just stopped whining for a second and kept your attention on the job, we would have been done here and back on our way to the Institute, but noooo." Alec rolled his eyes, drawing out the word just because he knew it ticked Jace wrong. "You just have to complain about every damn thing and never listen to me. _Don't you, Jace_!"

Jace gritted his teeth and took a step forward, jabbing his finger on Alec's shoulder to drive his point home. "If you watched out where you put your freaking feet we wouldn't be here! Don't try and make this about me!"

Alec made an offended sound at the back of his throat, one of his eyes squinting slightly in disbelief.

"Are you kidding me right now? Are you _actually_  making this my fault?!" Jace didn't have time to reply as Alec threw his hands in the air, exasperated. "There was a freaking spider on _my shoulder_  Jace!"

"Well you didn't have to act like crazy and fall on me! It's supposed you are the mature one here!"

"You're unbelievable." Alec huffed after staring incredulously for a few seconds. "I'd like to see you fighting off a duck."

"Don't even mention those things from Hell!"

They were so focused on their bickering that none of them noticed the eerie silence that had fallen all around them, until a loud, wet huff came from somewhere on their left.

They both froze in their places, trying to peak from the corner of their eye at the spot the sound had come from. Jace gulped tightly and whispered as low as he could.

"Please don't tell me you too think this is what I think it is."

"I think we think of the same thing." Alec's voice was as low as his brother's.

"What are we gonna do? Kill it?" Jace's fingers twitched over his seraph blade.

"We're not going to kill an innocent animal, Jace." Alec hissed under his breath.

"Then wha-"

And that was when a long drawn-out growl resonated from behind the shrubbery seperating them from the wild animal.

"Run! Run! Run!" Alec yelled grabbing Jace's sleeve and turning to dart up the path.

 

*******

 

**_3 hours earlier..._ **

 

"Are you sure this is the right way?" asked Alec, trying to peak over his parabatai's shoulder on the directions in his phone.

Jace shrugged, tossing the device over his shoulder at Alec who caught it quickly. "This is what the info says."

"Hm," Alec fiddled a little with the map on the screen, raising his head to look all around him and then glancing down at the phone again. "This is strange..." he muttered, moving his finger on the screen before turning the phone upside down, tilting his head this way and that.

"What is?" Jace asked, never faltering in his step as he turned around and started walking backwards.

"The map shows a river but..." Alec met Jace's eyes before continuing. "Do you hear rushing water?"

"Maybe it's dry?" Jace shrugged again, turning to face the uphill path in front of them. They had already been walking for an hour without a single stop.

Alec pondered over that, still looking between his phone and the dense forest around them.

"I don't know, Jace, it's been raining without stop the last few days, the river should be full."

Silence followed that statement, the only sounds coming from around them and their steps in the mud.

"Maybe we should head...back?" Jace suggested, his voice dropping slightly when he saw his brother shaking his head, a frown adorning his face.

"No can do." Alec said, "this demon has been creating trouble."

"To whom?!" Jace inquired, throwing his hands in the air in incredulity. "The trees and the birds? Or maybe the rabbits scurrying around the place?"

Alec rolled his eyes.

"Really, Alec, this is just a waste of time." Jace sighed, carding a hand through his blond tresses that fell in his eyes as Alec passed from beside him and started leading the path. "Maybe we should head back."

"No, Jace. We have a mission and as the Head of the Inst-"

"For God's sake, Alec! No one is going to blame you if we fail once!" Jace exclaimed, grabbing his brother's bicep.

Alec glared at him, jaw flexing momentarily. Before taking a deep breath and stating his decision.

"No, Jace, and that's final." He was about to turn and start walking again but Jace's hand prevented him from doing so. His eyes held a slightly pleading look when Alec met his gaze.

"At least let's take a break. We've been walking for the past hour and then some."

Alec sighed in defeat after a couple of seconds, his feet were killing him anyway and he could feel the annoying crick at the base of his neck from when he had taken a nap at his office earlier becoming something more. "Yeah, okay." he mumbled, rolling his head on his shoulders to ease the crick. "Let's find somewhere to sit down."

They made their way to a small clearing and Alec moved to sit down against a tree while Jace opted for a rock because _"no way I’m sitting on the mud, Alec, these jeans are new."_

Alec had just let his head rest back and was trying to look through the leaves atop to the slowly darkening sky when Jace's voice reached him.

"So... How are things with Magnus?" the blond asked, lean fingers ripping a stem from the ground and fiddling with it.

"Good. How are things with Clary?"

"Good."

"Good." Alec repeated, feeling the awkwardness filling the space around them. He didn't like it one bit. This... this stillness that had fallen between them after the parabatai bond had vanished and then, magically, appeared again. He didn't understand why Jace would do it, but he could tell his brother was keeping something from him. And it probably was something that would land them right in the middle of trouble one way or the other. Such was their fate.

Alec frowned, looking at the landscape surrounding him. It really was a beautiful place, all thick shrubbery in various tones of green and brown with wild flowers and birds chirping all around. He wished he had brought one of his books along as he took out his phone to check for any missed messages and found one from Izzy informing him that everything was perfect back at the Institute and for him to enjoy his time becoming one with nature. Alec let out a soft laugh and shook his head before pushing the device back in his pocket.

"Look, Alec-" Jace started after a while, unable to take the silence anymore as he moved to his feet and took one step towards his parabatai.

If asked later, Alec would say with great conviction that _this_  was the exact moment everything started going to shit.

Jace let out a surprised yelp as he felt the ground giving way under his feet and promptly felt himself falling. Alec's eyes flew open wide and he was on his feet in milliseconds when he heard the pained gasp coming from Jace, an aborted call of his brother's name leaving his lips as he reached forward, only for him to feel something tightening around his legs.

"What the-" he got to say before the air got punched out his lungs and he was suddenly hanging upside down from a branch three meters above the ground.

"You got to be fucking kidding me!" Alec heard Jace exclaim from where he had landed in a pit two meters into the ground.

"Headcheck?" Alec grunted, trying to look around him for any potential threats from his reversed and dangling position.

"All good, just give me a couple of minutes for the iratze to work." Jace grunted too, waiting for his sprained ankle to heal. "What happened to you? I can't see you…"

Alec sighed in relief when he didn't spot anyone and grumbled his reply as he folded his arms over his chest, trying not to get all dizzy.

"I'm hanging upside down from a tree, Jace." A cackling sound came from inside the pit. "Stop laughing, this isn't funny! Anyone could have ambushed us!" Alec yelled, throwing his arms in a frustrated gesture and making the rope swing faster, not a very wise decision. At all. "And who the Hell put those traps here and why?!" he wondered aloud just as Jace jumped on the ground and landed perfectly on his feet. "Yeah, let me see you doing the fucking superhero landing without the help of a rune." he grumbled behind his teeth as he took a deep breath and folded on his stomach, reaching for the rope with one hand and his seraph blade with the other.

"Wait! Wait!" Jace exclaimed and Alec turned to look at him, only to find him holding his phone out and positioning it towards Alec. "Izzy needs to see this, go back to hanging down."

Alec threw him an unamused look. "Are you kidding me?" he asked, but before he could turn the level of his glare up a notch Jace was poking on his ribs. With a stick. Making him leave out a harsh breath of surprise and fall back down as his hold on the rope slipped.

He heard the shutter of the camera and folded his arms over his chest again glaring at his parabatai who took another picture, laughing under his breath at the menacing look Alec was giving him. _Raziel, sometimes he is such an asshole._

"Can I disentangle myself now, or -I don't know- want to film a video clip while _all of my blood goes to my brain_?" he growled in annoyance. "I mean, I'm pretty sure I could kill _Raining Men_  while landing." Alec added sassily, his glare intensifying the longer he stayed like this.

Jace chuckled as a reply, gesturing for Alec to go on with what he was doing, _thank you very much_. So, after sending him a last dirty stare, Alec took another breath and folded in the middle like he had done before. He tried to do a quick job with the small buckle of his thigh holster, but as he was going to draw out the blade, something poked him in the ribs again, making his fingers slip on the handle and the blade to fall on the ground.

Alec's eyes fluttered closed as he bristled.

"Come on, Alexander, what is taking you so long?" Jace taunted between chuckles.

"Don't. Call me. _That._ " He forced out through his teeth. He was so going to kill his parabatai one of these days.

Instead of going into carnage mode, he took another -hopefully calming- breath and slowly let it out before reaching for the seraph dagger in his boot, still holding on the rope.

"Give me a superhero landing, dude!" Jace demanded still recording the whole thing instead of helping. Alec knew they should have never let the vampire coax them into watching movies with him. Even more, superhero ones.

Alec gritted his teeth, gripping the rope tighter with one hand while he cut it with the dagger. When it snapped he put the dagger between his teeth and started climbing up the rope with both hands, until he reached the branch it was hanging over and perched on it, looking at his brother with a challenging smirk as he secured the dagger back in his boot.

Rising carefully to his feet he pointed at Jace. "You want a superhero landing?" he waited for Jace to nod. He could be childish too if this was how it was going to go. "Then you will get a superhero landing! And without a rune!" he exclaimed, positioning one of his feet slightly in front of the other and opening his arms to each side. Closing his eyes as he jumped from the branch, he somersaulted in the air, landing perfectly with one knee on the ground.

Jace erupted into hollering while Alec got on his feet, patted the dust from his pants and harnessed his seraph blade back into his thigh holster.

"Man, that was impressive!"

Alec shrugged with one shoulder, a lopsided, cocky smile tugging on his lips as he gestured at himself. "Head of the Institute."

Jace chuckled again and went to pat him on the shoulder as he fiddled with his phone. "There. Sent." he smirked, looking up at Alec. "Simon is so going to take our ears off, ya know. Going on and on about what a brilliant idea he had making us watch Marvel movies."

"Oh, God." Alec groaned, already feeling a headache settling in the back of his head as he thought of the vampire talking a mile a minute. "Let's just move on."

 

*******

 

It was another twenty minutes later when they encountered the next obstacle. Really, this time it was all on Jace. On Jace and his stupid habit of texting Clary while they walked on a rocky, uphill path in the middle of a secluded forest. Oh, and his unending curiosity.

Maybe Alec needed to start confiscating things. He would have to think about it.

So, while Alec lead the way, having his back turned to his brother and tried to find a reasonable explanation for the glitch in the map or any trace of the demon, Jace had his entire focus on the texts that continued coming. The constant _ding ding_  was driving Alec crazy. Slowly, but steadily.

"Clary says she wishes one day to be able to do even a decent landing, because it would be awesome, and that it would be wistful thinking to even hope to land as perfectly as you." That at least made Alec smile a little, forgetting his annoya- " _also_ , she says that you, glaring while dangling upside down, surely wasn't as intimidating as usual and if we could try to hang you like this more often back in the Institute. Pretty please with a heart emoji." the smile vanished from Alec's face in seconds.

"Do that and not even Magnus's admiration for her will save her." Alec threatened, eyes fixing momentarily at Jace. "And one day you will go to your room just to find it full of ducks." he smirked before adding with a wink, "Just saying. Heart emoji."

Jace shook as a shiver ran through his body and went back to relaying Alec's words to his girlfriend. They continued in silence for a while, before Alec had enough of the stupid map and the stupid _ding ding_ , so he pocketed his phone and wondered out loud, "who do you think set those traps? Could it be Valentine's men?"

Jace shrugged. "Don't know dude, could be Malachi, but he's out of the picture, so there's no reason to worry."

"Who knows…But it still looks weird to me. Shouldn't the pit be a little more, I don't know, full with mud after so many days of raining?"

"Probably."

"Then why did it look like it was newly dug? And the rope was almost completely dry."

"Maybe they were set up by hunters after the rain?"

Alec turned to throw an unamused stare at his brother.

"The only hunters in Alicante are _Shadowhunters_ , Jace."

"Well, when I lived here with my fathe- uhm, Valen-..." Jace made a disgusted face, still mulling over the fact that Valentine acted like his father while having killed his biological one. Raziel, his life was such a mess. "When I lived here, we had to hunt to sustain ourselves and I learned a thing or two about traps."

Alec made an inquiring sound at the back of his throat, urging Jace to continue and grace him with his knowledge on the subject.

Jace held his stare for a minute, trying to build his anticipation, before answering with a small grin.

"But we've never used traps like these, as they would be for bigger animals and not rabbits or boars, so I don't have an idea. Sorry." he smiled almost apologetically at Alec who rolled his eyes and pushed Jace's face away with his palm.

"You're so useless sometimes." he jibed, smiling a little at Jace's huff of protest.

Alec looked at the sky, the sun low in the horizon dropping its colourful rays over the trees. The gears in his mind were working overtime, trying to figure everything out _and_  find that damned demon, that Jace's next exclaim startled him out of his thoughts.

"Wait, what _is that_?" he asked in wonder and Alec took a silent moment to close his eyes and hope that, for just one time Jace's curiosity would have a nice result -or no result at all, really he wasn't picky.

"Jace, please don't do the stupid thing." said Alec as he turned on his heel and faced Jace who had already done the stupid thing.

"Uhm...too late for that...?" Jace's eyebrows were high up on his forehead, a clearly regretful expression adorning his features as his hand was stuck inside a-

"Wait. Is that a plant?" Alec asked, going to check said plant closely. "Is it actually a flesh eating plant?" he repeated in wonder taking his phone out to take a quick picture and send it to his boyfriend. "I can't believe it! Magnus is going to love it!" his voice held an excited timbre, his hazel eyes were open wide in awe. "I've never thought we had flesh eating plants in Alicante! This is _amazing_! Look at those little, prickly teeth." he cooed, turning his head this way and that so he could take in everything about this fascinating discovery. "Do you know that these plants are-"

Jace looked at him weirdly, "Okay, calm your inner geek now, Alec and help me cut this thing off because it's _eating my hand_  if you couldn't see for yourself."

Alec scoffed irritably, crossing his arms in front of him. "Firstly," he raised an eyebrow, "you did something I've warned you time and time again not to do, -which is _DO NOT TOUCH, EAT OR DRINK WEIRD OR COLOURFUL THINGS YOU HAVEN'T SEEN BEFORE_ -so really, I believe you deserve it.  And secondly, I'm not going to cut off a rare plant only because you were curious and stupid. What if Magnus wants me to take it back to him for a potion or something?" he finished, his voice rising in indignation.

"Oh my God!" Jace exclaimed with an unbelieving glare. "It's a flesh eating plant! We aren't going to take it all the way back to New York just because your boyfriend has you whipped! Now, help me get my hand off there!"

Alec's eyes narrowed, a frown settling on his face. Taking a few moments to just glare before replying. "You walked into this mess, you get yourself out of it." he stated, turning on his feet and leaning against a tree, arms still crossed in front of him while Jace looked incredulously at him.

"Are you serious?" Jace demanded and glared at his brother when his only response was a half-assed, one-shouldered shrug, complete with a twist of his lips. "Really, Alec! Help me get my hand out or so help me...uh-uhm...what are you doing?" Jace asked when he saw Alec's expression changing, adorning a maniacal smirk and unsheathing his blade, holding it threateningly beside his head as he looked at Jace's face and took a step towards him. "With pleasure." he drawled, his voice an octave lower than usual.

Jace was so terrified by this display of murdering intent that he couldn't utter a single syllable for a second or two, before erupting into frantic reassurances. "No! No! Nononononono! Actually, I think I can take care of it myself, thank you for offering though." Jace exclaimed in terror, holding out his free hand to stop Alec.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, thank you, Alec."

"You don't want me to lend a _blade_  or something?" Alec almost purred, putting emotion behind the word _blade_  just to freak his brother more.

"Yes, yes, just...just go and be a good parabatai and stand, like, at that tree, over there? You know, the furthest away one?" Jace was pointing at a tree at least five meters away from him and Alec couldn't help holding back a delighted chuckle that turned into full out cackling the more his brother stared at him in profound question, _has his brother gone crazy under all that pressure?_

"Ahh, you should have seen your face." Alec sighed after a while, wiping tears from his eyes, little laughs still leaving his lips. "It was hilarious."

Jace pouted in annoyance at him. "Still, go stand right there, because I'm going to punch you when I'll get my hand free." he grumbled drawing his seraph blade and trying to drive it between the plant's metaphorical mouth.

Alec shook his head in amusement while he went back to leaning against the tree, checking his phone and replying to a couple messages regarding ongoing missions, all the while chuckling as he listened to Jace grunt and curse while he tried to free himself.

"Oh my God!" Jace exclaimed in surprise a little later, drawing Alec's attention.

"What now?" he asked, raising his eyes to look at the direction of his idiot brother just to see him having freed his hand and staring in horror at the plant. That was on fire.

Alec jumped on his feet, rushing to his parabatai's side and throwing his jacket on the burning plant to take out the fire.

"What the Hell have you done, Jace?!" he asked in panic, stomping on the now charred material of his jacket. At least he had pushed his phone in his back pocket in his haste.

"I-I couldn't open it with the blade, so I drew the fire rune." Jace mumbled in shame, not wanting to meet his brother's judgmental gaze.

"I guess it runs in the family." Alec sighed. He pushed his long fingers through his messy hair. "It's alright. Are you okay?" he asked in concern.

Jace shrugged. "Yeah, just a couple scratches, apparently this plant is a slow eater." he smiled slowly, making Alec snort in amusement as he shook his head.

"Well, if we could be on our way now, I'd be delighted." Alec said, grabbing his ruined jacket from the ground and checking it to see if he had forgotten anything important in there -which he hadn't because Alec never misplaced anything.

"Magnus is so rubbing off on you; what's up with the fancy words?" The blond joked, pocketing his stele as they started making their way again.

"Well, isn't that the point?" Alec inquired. Jace looked incredulously at him smirking and jiggling his eyebrows suggestively. Something that rewarded Alec with a not-so-gentle push from his brother.

“I’m the one making the bad innuendos here, Alec!”

Alec chuckled as he tried to catch up to Jace.

 

*******

 

"So, get this." Alec started, gesturing with one hand towards Jace who was walking beside him, the path being a little wider at this point than the rest of the way. "I got Izzy to search what's going on with the map and she's saying that there _is_  a river in the area but that it is an underground one, so this is why we haven't seen or heard anything." Alec relayed, happy with the fact they weren't completely lost. Although he surely felt lost in these woods, it was probably something having to do with the thickness of nature and green surrounding them, at some points it was even hard to navigate through the trees as they were enormous and very close to each other.

"Isn't that just delightful." Jace snarked, rolling his eyes. It's been _hours_  of them just walking and keep walking and there was no sight of the demon anywhere- or a Johnny, walking and treating them to some nice scotch. He had started getting cranky and a cranky Jace was someone Alec didn't want to deal with on a good day, moreover while trying to not sprain an ankle climbing over rocks.

Alec was thinking if it was a good idea to retort to the snark or if it would be better not to when his phone beeped with an incoming message.

**"Ohh, I haven't seen a plant like this in a few years. Would you be an angel and bring it back for me, love? I can make you a portal, so it will be easier to transport it. Also, it will keep Blondie from further trouble, lmao."**

Alec stopped mid-step, looking startled at the text. He had forgotten he had sent a picture of Jace's hand stuck in that plant from earlier. And of course his boyfriend needed the plant his brother had destructed. Just his luck.

"Can this day get worse?" he burst out before he could stop himself. Seriously, he should have known better than to press his luck, it wasn't like he hadn't gotten his lesson after years spent on missions with Jace and Izzy.

"We could fall down a waterfall." Jace grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest. He had stopped too, a few paces away from Alec and had turned to see what had made his brother stop. "What happened now?"

"Magnus wants the plant. He even suggested portaling us back. Also, he is and I quote _lmao-ing_ at your stupid behavior." he sent a glare at Jace's way who threw his arms in the air.

"Now what! Are you going to start yelling at me?" he bellowed, expectant of the scolding that was to come. Really, he was kind of surprised Alec hadn't started immediately after ruining the plant. All this time, he was just waiting for it to come.

"Don't get that tone! If you hadn't-" but Alec's sentence was cut short. His eyes opening wide in horror, hands flying on his face as his mouth fell wide open and tried to spit at the same time. It was the most disgusting thing Jace had ever seen his proper brother ever do and the only thing he could do was to stand and watch him in distaste.

"What the Hell are you doing?" he inquired, reaching out his hands towards his parabatai, watching as Alec's frenzy turned up a notch, something that made their bond surge with a wave of terror. "Are you having a stroke or something?"

Alec didn't answer, still trying to cough and spit, stressing Jace out. It was bad to know his parabatai was in trouble, but it was way worse when Alec stood right infront of him and he didn't know what was happening or how to help.

"Alec! You're freaking me out! What is going on? Is it magic? A demon? Wh-" just then, a small bright thing fell from Alec's lips on the ground and the tall one tried to wheeze some air back into his lungs.

"I can't. Fucking. Believe it." Alec whispered between lungfuls of air as Jace crouched down to take a closer look at what had caused Alec's distress.

Jace was stunned. Mouth falling open in shock as he looked between his brother and the tiny, yellow and black insect.

"A bee?" he exclaimed in disbelief.

"Fucking thing, it stung me a hundred times!" Alec mumbled, stroking his cheeks in a try to bring back some feeling to them. He ran his tongue over the inside of his mouth, brows furrowed at how numb it felt. "I can't believe it. What else will go wrong?" again, he should have known better.

"What?" Jace stood to his feet, brows furrowed as he looked weirdly at his brother.

"Didn't you hear me?"

"What are you saying?"

"For the love of Raziel, Jace! I said-" and that was when Alec realized there was something very wrong with his face. Suddenly he could see more of his cheeks if he cross-eyed and looked down.The whole bottom half of it felt like cotton. "What's wrong with my face?" he asked.

Or so he thought.

What came out was more like "Watts vron wif mieh faeesss?"

Jace looked incredulously at him, eyes fluttering and eyebrows rising in horror.

"Dude, your face is like a balloon! I can't understand a thing of what you're saying!" he exclaimed, gesturing at Alec with his hands.

Alec scrambled around for his phone, he had thrown it to the ground in his haste to take the bee out of his mouth, and opened the front camera, taking a look at himself. His hazels opened wide as his fingers stroked and poked his cheeks in alarm. They were almost twice the size they had been before, his sharp cheekbones gone under their puffiness. His lips, too, were twice the size, making him look like a very bad result of a plastic surgery (Magnus later would say like Donatella Versace, a reference Alec didn't get) and his tongue was almost too full for his mouth.

"Oh mieh Gotth." he mumbled, freaked out.

He heard a very quiet snort, but a snort nonetheless and raised his eyes to glare at his brother who was obviously trying so hard not to start laughing.

"Thith ithen't founnyh!" He grumbled, throwing his arms in the air in exasperation. 

"Sorry, sorry." Jace was biting the inside of his cheek in a try to hold back, but a single look at Alec glaring at him while looking like a bad caricature had him thrown over the edge, a wave of almost painful cackling and wheezing being punched out of his lungs.

Alec huffed in annoyance, grouching incomprehensibly under his breath as he reached for his stele and activated an iratze, sighing in discomfiture when the healing wasn't immediate. He heard again the damned shutter of the camera and scowled as he typed on his phone and showed the text to Jace who chuckled upon reading it aloud.

"At least make it look as bad as it could get?" Jace turned an inquiring look at Alec. "What you mean?"

Alec raised his pointer in the air between them and gestured at himself. Then, he folded his arms against his chest, turning his stance in the one his body slipped into automatically when he scolded someone or was unhappy with something and glared at the direction of the camera, nodding to show this was it.

"I can't believe you." the blond let out an amused, little laugh and positioned his phone to take the picture. "This truly is better...or worse?" he wondered out loud, receiving a shrug as a reply. His eyes smoothed over with unhidden care as he looked at his brother. "The iratze won't take long." his voice was almost a whisper. Jace reached out a hand and squeezed at Alec's shoulder in reassurance who gave a little smile -that looked more like a grimace- and rolled his eyes fondly at his brother, feeling the parabatai bond humming with the feeling of affection surging between them. He hadn't felt that in a while, at least not since Jace had passed to him the position of the Head.

Alec huffed, trying not to let his emotions take the best of him, so he patted Jace's blond mop of hair, ruffling the strands with his fingers.

"Dude, you're messing my perfect hair with your gigantic paw!" Jace laughed, swatting Alec's hand away. Alec made a snorting sound at the back of his throat.

 **"Send the photo to Izzy and tell her this will be my new way of putting everyone in order."**  Alec typed, showing it to his brother and rolling his eyes when Jace looked at him like he was a lunatic. His scarred eyebrow rose in inquiry.

"It's just..." Jace shook his head, huffing in surprise. "I never thought I'd live to see the moment you wouldn't turn somber over a little set back. It's quite nice."

Alec shrugged, trying not to jolt his head much. **"There's nothing I can do except wait for the iratze to work so..."**

"Yeah, tell me about that." Jace murmured as he tried to send the picture to their little sister. "Ahh, crap! No service!" he exclaimed shaking his phone and raising it in the air like that would change anything. "I swear I had full bars until a moment ago, what happened!" He looked up at Alec who sported a little smile, his face already starting to come back to normal, and announced with great conviction. "Tell you what, let's walk for a while and if the signal isn't back I'm climbing a tree."

The brunette stared judgmentally at him.

"I'll be carefull I promise!" Jace exasperated. "This time..." he added after remembering the last time he had promised that to his brother.

Alec huffed in reply, rolling his eyes as he stepped forward, gesturing for Jace to do the same so they could continue on their path.

"I swear, one of these days your eyes are going to get stuck like this and I'll be laughing at your face."

Alec scoffed, patting Jace absent-mindedly on the back while he typed out a message to Magnus, telling him how the plant had met a woeful end and bees were evil and never to be trusted.

 

*******

 

From that moment onwards it was like a dam had broken open, one bad thing occurring after the other. The first in the series happening not even five minutes later, when Jace, irked for not being able to get service, decided -not so wisely of course, but Alec couldn't object as much as he’d like  because the swelling still hadn't give out- to climb on a tree in a futile try to get even a single bar of signal.

Alec had stayed on the ground, not willing enough to try ascending all those branches that he wasn't even sure how sturdy they were in the first place. His brother could act like a fool on his own, thank you very much.

He was in the middle of drawing another iratze right beside his parabatai rune and listening to the distant grouching of Jace as he made his way to the top when his eyes fell on a teeny tiny thing innocently hanging right in front of him and he let out a screech.

No really, it was a screech. A very ungainly, very un-manly, not-warrior-like, god-awful screech. He wouldn't even deny it afterwards. Okay, maybe he would, but the thing remained, that right in front of him from her iridescent almost entirely transparent webstring, hanged the most terrifying beast he had ever seen. A spider. A god-awful spider had the Head of the New York Institute (the youngest one if he might add) petrified right where he stood.

"Ja-Ja-Jace!" Alec stuttered, taking a tiny step back, trying not to anger the beast. " _Jace!_ " he parroted taking another step away from the insect, his heel hitting against a rock that made him lose his balance and find himself sitting on his butt in mere seconds, wide hazel eyes still staring at the spider.

"Alec!" he heard from above him but he didn't take his eyes away even for a second. Spiders were cunning things; you took your eyes from them and in a split second they vanished and you didn't know where they had hid to plot your demise. He was kind of dramatic, sue him!

"Alec, what's wrong?" Jace shouted as he tried to take a look at his brother, way down on the ground through the thick leaves. Their bond pulsing on his side with the searing feeling of fear, almost to the level of hurting. He was ready to climb down when Alec's faint reply reached his ears.

"A-a spider!"

Jace sighed in relief, closing his eyes for a moment and trying to push a calming wave through the bond to get his brother out of his terrified stupor.

"I'll be right there in a minute." he called back and looked at his phone, waving it and raising it in the air to see if he could get service. "Motherf-" he was cut off by a wheezing sound over his head and, as he ducked and folded his arms over his hair to save his head, two clawed feet grabbed the device from his hand and flew off.

Taken aback by the attack, Jace raised his head to see a falcon flying away. And again, he should have known better too. "Are you kidding me? What else will happen, an eagle will think my head is a roden-oh, shit!"

He hadn't even gotten to finish his sentence. A loud screech -not unlike Alec's- resonated from somewhere behind him.

Jace's bicoloured eyes flew wide open as he turned to look behind him, no hyperboling it when, later, he would reiterate that an eagle the size of a medium-sized dog was threateningly whooshing towards his head, lured by the way the fainting rays of the sun reflected on his golden hair. ( _“No, for real, Izzy! I heard a 'whoosh whoosh' and then that beast was flying towards me!”_ )

"Oh shit! Oh shit!" he cursed under his breath as he quickly ducked under the leaves and made his, totally ungraceful, descend towards the ground, his foot slipping on the last few branches resulting in him landing with his back on the dirt, air knocked off him.

"Jace!" his parabatai's worried voice reached his ears as he scrambled on his knees beside his fallen brother. "Jace, can you hear me!"

"Yes." the blond wheezed out, managing to get some air in his lungs.

"Are you hurt anywhere?"

Jace shook his head. "Just give me a minute." he whispered, at which Alec nodded and let himself fall back on his butt, letting out a long, drawn-out, tired sigh. "Believe it or not a falcon just stole my phone and an eagle tried to eat my head." said Jace when he had regained his breath, making Alec splutter at him.

"What the Hell? Things like these actually happen?"

"Seems to be the motto of the day, Alec." Jace closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "I'm so tired of this day, can it be over already?" he wondered aloud, receiving a snort.

"Tell me about it."

"Okay, let's go and get this done with." Jace exclaimed, moving to his feet. He had just bent to reach for his fallen stele when Alec let out a scream and shoot on his feet, stepping on the stylus in his hasty way to move away from another spider.

"Why are there so many spiders at this clearing?!" he shouted in frustration as his back hit on Jace's chest, who could feel irritation bubbling inside his body.

"I don't know, Alec, maybe because we are in a _fucking forest_?" his voice rose at the end, showing his annoyance. "Awesome, now I'm left without my phone _and_  my stele." he grumbled. "Next thing we know-"

"No, no, no. Don't say anything more!" Alec hurriedly whispered in his face, eyes wide open in frantic urgency as he closed Jace's mouth with the palm of his hand. "We already found out that wondering or speculating will lead us to even bigger problems. Okay?"

Jace nodded, eyes opening wide too in understanding and waited for Alec to take his hand away before trying to speak. "Yeah, you're right." he agreed, bending down to take the broken parts of his stele, sighing after seeing the stone totally smashed.

"When am I not?" Alec gave a half smile, grabbing at his parabatai's arm to tug him away.

What came after wasn't too far down the path.

As they were walking, Alec felt Jace stop and closed his eyes in irritation. "What now?" he asked himself before turning to find Jace scowling to a, quite large, patch of mud, his foot buried mid-calf deep. "Now, how did this happen?" Alec bellowed, throwing his hands in the air aggravated.

Jace didn't deign him with an answer, only looking at him with a pout on his full lips, looking for all of the world like a kicked puppy. Alec grunted in frustration, tangling his long fingers through his hair and tugging at his black tresses, muttering profanities under his breath while Jace tried to free his leg, only for him to fall backwards when he got his foot out of the mud, shoe still stuck inside somewhere.

"That's it! If you're going to try and get it back, I'm leaving you behind." Alec growled, tugging forcefully at Jace's bicep to get him off the ground and moving.

"I can't walk around without a shoe, Alec!" Jace protested indignantly. "I could step on anything."

"Do you see your damn shoe anywhere in there to even think there is even a slight chance it won't be filled with mud?" Alec retorted, giving him a hard look, hazels burning in frustration.

Jace inhaled deeply, his own bicoloured orbs flaring up in anger. He didn't want to give an answer right then, because he knew it would be a nasty one and he also knew that Alec was right. So, he simply gritted his teeth and pushed his shoulder on Alec's on his way past him.

 

*******

 

**_Now.._ **

 

"A fucking bear! I can't fucking believe it!" Jace shouted, reaching for the stele Alec was extending towards him so he could activate his speed rune.

"Shut up and run, Jace!" Alec shouted, gripping his bow tightly in one hand as he ran in front of Jace.

Jace gritted his teeth and pocketed the stele, securing it as it was their last one. They could still hear the huffing and growling of the bear running behind them.

"We need to cover our scents or somehow confuse it. In Animal Planet it said that a bear can hunt a scent for hours and really, it would have been better if we had stayed completely still without moving, but-"

"I don't fucking care what it said on Animal Planet! What I care about is getting as far away from that beast as possible." Jace shouted, jumping over a rock.

"Activate the agility rune; we're going to need it." Alec instructed as he barely fit between two thick trunks and looked to the front, his hazels meeting only thick shrubbery and trees.

"Maybe we could climb on a tree or something, just not to the top because fucking eagles, man!"

Alec took a split second to send a cold stare at his brother before cluing Jace into the fact that bears can climb trees if they want and that, "it would be good watching a few documentaries from time to time, Jace." he added with a salty look.

"Whatever you say, Professor Lightwood." Jace grimaced in annoyance. "Won't you activate the rune?" he asked when his brother didn't make a move to take his stele back as they continued running.

"No need to. I activated it last night, still working."

"Last night? But last night you were in the office all the-" Jace's face changed in a disturbed grimace as revelation dawned on him. "Ooh my God! No, no, no! I don't wanna know!" he exclaimed, running a hand through his hair.

Alec laughed lightly, turning to wiggle his eyebrows at Jace who groaned and pushed with his palm Alec's face away.

"Magnus is so rubbing off on you!" Jace chuckled a little, ignoring the slight throbbing of his foot on the rocky path.

They stopped talking for a while, trying to avoid hitting on anything and they ran until they reached a badly formed fork where they stopped right in the middle of it, looking both ways.

"Okay, I know it's not a good idea to get separated, but we are parabatai and can feel when the other is near-"

"Can you get to the point, Jace, please?" Alec asked irritably. They had a few minutes before the bear caught up to them, but he wasn't going to risk it.

"You take that way and I this one and after five minutes we start going towards each other and meet in the middle...?" Jace suggested, grimacing in uncertainty. "I don't know man, we can't continue running all evening and it's already dark out here."

"After the day we had, you want to tell me it looks like a brilliant idea to you to go our own way? No, we're sticking together and that's final." Alec stated through gritted teeth, all his sass pouring out, already readying himself to crash any and all of Jace's objections. It would be an understatement to say he wasn't the least bit flabbergasted when Jace simply nodded and looked up at him.

"You're right." he said, huffing at a strand of hair that fell into his eyes. "Rock, paper, scissors for which way?"

Alec was silent for a full minute, still surprised from Jace not objecting him for once, before he nodded and held out his fist resting on the palm of his other hand.

 

*******

 

"I can't run anymore. My foot is killing me." Jace puffed and huffed, stopping abruptly in his tracks and putting his hands on his knees, bending over to catch his breath as Alec stopped beside him drenched in sweat. "I think it lost us."

"I don't think so, but we have the least thirty minutes on it." Alec huffed too, raising the hem of his black t-shirt to wipe on his face. "This day is just getting worse and worse."

"Tell me about it." Jace took out Alec's stele and quickly drew an iratze, throwing it to Alec afterwards who caught it with quick fingers and activated his heightened hearing rune and night vision as the forest surrounding them was turning pitch black.

"Can you hear this?" Alec asked suddenly, moving towards the source of the noise.

"What?" Jace was quick to follow his brother when he started walking.

"I think I can hear...yup, those are wolves." Alec nodded, standing still. "Thankfully they are far, far away."

"Since when do we have wolves and bears in Alicante and so low in the mountain?" Jace exasperated in a whisper, grabbing the stele again to activate his own runes too. Alec stared funnily at him.

"You are the one who lived in these woods and you didn't know that?" he wondered in surprise, watching his brother shaking his head. "How did you even survive?!" he drew out, one eye narrowing and an eyebrow rising.

Jace took an expression that was half-pout, half-frown and stared coldly at Alec before replying. "I guess wolves and bears had nothing on Valentine, Alec." he crossed his arms over his chest.

Alec clicked his tongue, rolling his eyes in amusement. "Tsk, could save us some trouble." he looked around, sighing deeply. "Instead they put us in trouble for our troubles."

Jace looked at him funny. "Sometimes when you talk I swear I can't make sense."

Alec shrugged, repositioning the strap of his quiver across his chest. “I’m tired, man. My brain is frayed. Also," Alec added after a while of trekking over uneven rocks. "We aren't that low on the mountain anymore. We've been ascending for hours, haven’t you noticed?"

Jace gave a non-committal hum.

 

*******

 

It wasn’t logical. It wasn't making any sense. None at all! Alec couldn't even begin to wrap his head around it as for one more time he found himself and Jace trying to escape the _same damn bear_.

"How did it find us so soon? You said it wouldn't catch up for thirty and it's barely been fifteen!" Jace shouted as he maneuvered through the trees.

"How can I fucking know!" Alec shouted back, jumping over a fallen log. "This is insane! Bears can't run with such speed!"

"Maybe Animal Planet was wrong, Alec."

"Animal Planet is never wrong, Jace! There's something wrong with this bear!"

Jace rolled his eyes. _Thou shalt not insult Animal Planet in front of Alexander Gideon Lightwood._  Jace thought in slightly annoyed humour.

 

*******

 

Jace was ready to turn and kill the damn bear when almost half an hour later they were still dashing through the woods, the animal hot on their heels.

"Is it magicked or something?" he exclaimed, sending a look over his shoulder. When he glanced back on the path before them he saw the trees spacing out, making way for a clearing. "Is it good or bad that we are heading to a clearing?"

"I think it's very, very bad, we won't have the trees to make its way difficult." Alec replied, wiping the sweat from his upper lip. "We go and we try to make our way through it the fastest we can."

Jace nodded, pushing his feet to go faster. "Tell me again, why we can't just kill the damn bear? We can't be running forev-....-er...." Jace's words slowed in the air as he came to an abrupt stop three steps into the clearing, hand shooting out to hold Alec by his chest, making him stop too. His bicoloured eyes were wide in shock as he looked down, down, down the cliff.

"What the Hell!" Alec exasperated. "What now?" he looked down too. They were so high up they couldn't see a single thing in the pitch black of the canyon, night vision rune or not. "What are we going to do?"

Jace glanced inside the canyon before raising his eyes to meet Alec's hazel ones, a decisive frown on his face. "There's only one way, Alec."  
  
Alec closed his eyes, bringing his fingers to rub at his sweaty temples while praying under his breath. "Please don't say it, please don't say it, please don't say it."

Jace grabbed his shoulder and squeezed. "We have to jump." he announced.

"Damn it, you said it!" Alec cursed, "Damn this stupid bear and damn this stupid demon and damn _you_  for having such a stupid idea!" Alec exploded, shrugging Jace's hand from his shoulder. "I'm not going to jump from up here _down there, Jace!_ "

"It's the only way, Alec..." Jace sighed in defeat. "It's not like I want to risk my life, but it's this or killing the damn bear!"

"We're going to die, Jace! Like, _die_  die."

"I can see water, Alec; it's going to be alright." Jace tried to reassure his brother, mentally reassuring himself too, because if Alec wasn't okay he wasn't either. The bond playing games with his self-control and the way he decided how to do things.

"You don't know that, it could be very shallow and we will meet our end. I'm still too young to die, Jace!” He exclaimed and then fixed his eyes on Jace as he decided to change his tactic “What will Clary do when you will be dead -and I along with you, because half the reasons she's alive still are because of me." Alec protested, playing his strongest card as he said in a soothing voice, "Think of her, brother."

Jace sucked a shocked breath. "You're playing dirty,  _brother_."

Alec huffed and crossed his arms, "Well I'm thinking of Magnus and Izzy and Clary and the Institute -where I'm _the Head_. So, yeah, I ain't gonna jump, _brother_."

Jace sulked for a few seconds, eyes narrowed, staring Alec down who glared back at him. "Either this," he growled, pointing at the canyon, "or we kill the bear." he changed the direction of his pointer to where they could hear the bear coming closer and closer before Jace folded his arms against his chest and continued looking at Alec who was looking back at him with wide, betrayed eyes, an imminent fire swirling through the hazel orbs.

"Ugh! Damn it, Jace! You know I can't kill an innocent animal!"

"Innocent my ass! It's been chasing us like rabid for the past hour or so!" Jace yelled.

Alec's jaw tightened, glaring once again in the canyon, kicking a rock over the edge and trying to calculate the distance. He sighed in defeat when he heard a faint _plop_  when, after a few seconds, the rock hit the surface of the water.

"Give me your hand." Jace coaxed, reaching out for his hand. Alec took it unwillingly, feeling the thrill of the parabatai bond getting complete. "On the count of three. 1.." Jace started counting and they took a few steps back to have as much momentum as they could.

Alec glared at him, "If we die I'm going to beat your ghostly ass to eternity, or so help me Raziel."

Jace grinned in amusement, pearly whites showing, spending eternity with his parabatai didn't sound so bad, even if his parabatai was a vengeful ghost. "2..."

"I hate you so much," Alec grumbled as he positioned himself to run, tightening his grip on Jace's hand.

Jace shouted the last number.

"3!"

Taking a deep breath, they both started running at the same time. Their feet hitting the ground in absolute synchronization, before they leaped over the edge together.

"We're so dead."

 

*******

 

Alec came up the surface of the water with a very deep inhale in his haste to get air back into his lungs. Jace doing the same a couple seconds later, pushing his wet hair back onto his scalp. As it was proven the pond was quite deep, their momentum from the jump taking them deeper than they both expected.

They shared a look, both of them wheezing before they started laughing like maniacs.

"I can't believe you." Alec chuckled, splashing water to Jace's face with his big palm again and again, making the other laugh more as he raised his arms to deflect the attacks.

"Stop with the mini tsunamis, man!"

"We could have died; I don't think I'll stop." Alec laughed, swimming to his brother's side, just for him to put his hands on Jace's shoulders and steady himself over them with all of his weight, sinking him into the water.

"You're going to drown me or what?!" Jace shrieked between hysterical laughter.

"You'd deserve it, you bloody idiot." Alec retorted, but let go of his brother, turning in the water to look around him when he was attacked by Jace jumping on his shoulders and wrapping both arms and legs around his torso and neck.

"Never turn your back to the enemy!" Jace shouted, not letting go as Alec started half-heartedly thrashing while laughing.

They continued like this for a while until they were both short on breath and could feel the lassitude of the day catching up to them now that they weren't running for their lives and relief had washed over them.

They crawled to the tiny shore at the edge of the cave where they barely fit perched against the wall –well, Jace did, Alec who was freakishly tall still would have most of the downside of his calves into the water if he tried to spread them out, so he made sure to keep them folded against his chest like a child.

Jace sighed beside him, thumping his head lightly on the rock behind them. "You think we could try climbing to the top?" he asked with a tired voice.

"Yeah, if we wanted to meet our certain death when we will definitely slip on those glazed rocks, we could." Alec said and they both stared at the slippery death traps that surrounded them for a good minute before Jace sighed again.

"Yeah, you're right. Not my most brilliant idea."

Alec scoffed, "Understatement." a small smile graced his lips as he looked at Jace and bumped their shoulders together in brotherly affection.

"Hand me your stele for a minute." Jace muttered after a while, reaching out his hand, palm upwards as he waited while Alec reached in his back pocket.

"What the Hell!" Alec exclaimed in surprise, patting all of his pockets again and again, he scrambled quickly on his feet forgetting of the low ceiling of the cave in his haste and panic. A loud thump resonated throughout the small space of the cave right before Alec groaned in pain, hand coming up to the back of his head as he swayed on his feet.

"Alec!" Jace called out, rushing on his knees to hold onto his parabatai. "Are you okay, brother?" he asked in concern, the bond swaying with small electric-like influxes of pain.

"I'm...I'm good." Alec answered through gritted teeth, slowly falling on his knees beside Jace. "Just a little bump." he whispered in pain, but when he brought his hand in front of his face and looked at his palm blood was smearing the pale skin.

"Alec, there's blood. This is not good." Jace worried, making Alec prop against the rock and searching his hazel eyes. "Where's your stele?" he asked gently.

"I couldn't find it." Alec mumbled, feeling dizzier by the second.

"What d'you mean?" Jace was very close to freaking out. His brother, his _parabatai_  was injured and about to faint, they couldn't have ran out of steles!

"It must have fallen from my pocket when we fell into the water." Alec explained, squinting one of his eyes in pain.

Jace palmed the sides of Alec's face, biting his lip as he looked at his brother and tried to decide if it would be wise to leave him alone.

"What?" Alec drawled, looking at the blond through narrowed eyes.

"Can you promise me to not fall asleep for a while?" Jace asked instead, shaking lightly Alec's head, who frowned but nodded.

"Yeah, I'll try. It's probably a small concussion, so it won't be wise to let the fatigue take over." Alec mumbled, shaking his head to bring some sense back to his foggy mind.

Jace smiled softly at his ever practical brother.

"Okay, give me five, if I won't find it in that time-span I'm coming back here and trying to keep you awake." Jace promised, grabbing Alec's hand for extra reassurance.

"Okay..." Alec mumbled tightening his grip for a second before letting go.

Jace got carefully on his knees, glaring at the spot Alec had hit his head; the rock there wasn't as smooth as the rest of the cave. _Just our luck,_  he thought bitterly as he yanked his jacket and t-shirt off, handing the black t-shirt to Alec with instructions to press it over the bump on his head.

"I'll be back with your stele soon." he promised, giving a last look at his parabatai and diving into the dark water.

It was a difficult task but thanks to his persistence and his heightened sight, he was able to locate the stele lodged between two rocks on the bottom of the lake after a while. Going back up for a deep inhale of air and then diving back in, he swam to where the stele was and grabbed it from its temporary base, quickly swimming to the surface and outside on the tiny shore.

Alec had a concentrated frown on his face, eyes almost closed, but he opened them fully when Jace took his hand in a decisive grip and drew an iratze to the inside of his forearm, making him hiss lightly at the burn.

"All set." Jace nodded, happy with himself and the fact that his brother wasn't in danger as he reclaimed his position beside Alec, against the metaphorical wall of the cave. "Still with me?" he checked when Alec's head fell on his shoulder.

"Yeah, thank you." Alec mumbled, closing his eyes. He felt his skin tingling where the injury was.

"Anything for you, Alec." Jace smiled, letting his head rest back, closing his eyes too, taking in the peaceful silence.

In all truth, they hadn't had a moment of quiet companionship since before the whole thing with Clary had started. Alec getting more and more jittery as the years passed and trying to avoid moments similar to this one like they were the plague. Never the both of them alone like they used to. Only if Izzy tagged along did Alec agreed to spend time together. It was kind of hurtful and soul drenching to always feel that kind of worry coming from him, that feeling of helplessness and fear his brother seemed to always carry inside him since the moment they took the oath. Not being able to have quiet times with his parabatai, his best friend was taking its toll on Jace and eventually it started leading to wrong decisions.

Of course Jace didn't blame Alec; he never blamed Alec for anything, not truly. He knew he had played a big part in the shitstorm that came around after Clary tumbled into their lives like a small mass of burning fire; maybe he even played the biggest part. Making one mistake after the other, causing his parabatai to almost die in his frenzy to find and save him. And he continued doing just the same. Hiding things from him, telling him half-truths, but if this was the way to protect those dearest to him he would do it again and again. He just hoped this time the result wouldn't be as life threatening. That they could live happily in their subjective peaceful lives.

"I've missed this." Jace sighed after a while. He didn't know how much time had passed, time seemed to have slowed down inside the quiet stillness of the cave, and he didn't really care if he wanted to be truthful.

Alec hummed from his place on Jace's shoulder. "I can feel it." he mumbled, "I did too."

"I have a question though." Jace begun, nudging softly at Alec, a playful smile on his face. "Why did _we_  had to be the ones to go on this mission. I mean couldn't you have sent someone not prone to bad luck like us?"

Alec laughed lightly before replying, "Everyone else had other assignments and really it was either you or Clary and I'd kill the munchkin if we were stranded together, even if we are close to not lashing out at each other every five seconds now. Really, she makes me roll my eyes at her only half the time she did in the beginning." Alec reasoned, letting a half-grin to form on his face at Jace’s laugh.

"Wow, Alec be careful, next thing you'll know you will have sleepovers and you will be braiding her hair." Alec laughed in response, hitting Jace's chest lightly. "And why couldn't it have been her and I?"

Raising his head Alec gave him a tired stare, smirk playing on his lips. "Just how stupid do you think I am? If it was you and her alone on a mission in a forest, seeing as you have been together for only a couple of weeks, I don't think you would have gotten the job done." Alec winked playfully, letting his head fall back on Jace's shoulder, smiling at the fact he could do this now and not feel weird or guilty afterwards. "So yeah, you and me. Parabatai bonding time."

Jace smiled softly, bringing up the hand of the arm Alec was leaning on to rub at Alec's wet tresses, letting the companionable silence from before fall over them again.

"You know, I've never said it, but I'm happy that you are finally happy." he whispered, already feeling the constant buzz of tightness in the bond giving way a little. "I'm proud of you, Alec." he murmured, resting his cheek on Alec's head and closing his eyes.

 

*******

 

It was some time later, Alec had slid down to pillow his head against Jace's crossed legs, letting himself get consumed in a light nap now that there wasn't any danger if he did so, and Jace was snoozing against the wall, hand resting on his parabatai's bicep, when a light buzzing noise jerked them both awake after years of training.

"What is this?" Jace asked as Alec propped himself up and retook his position beside Jace as he searched into his front pocket.

"My phone." he mumbled in reply, a smile dawning his lips at the name on the screen. "Hello?" he answered.

"Hello to you too, darling." Magnus's excited voice reached his ear, making him grin more. "Are you done with the mission? I could make you a portal to come straight from the office. I grabbed Italian from Rome on my way home and this pasta smells, _mmm_ _delizioso_."

Alec rubbed the back of his neck, smile faltering and vanishing from his lips when he remembered his and Jace's current situation.

"Uhm...actually..." he started, trying to find the words that would make Magnus worry less. "We had a few setbacks and, well, we are...uhm..."

"Darling, is everything alright?" Magnus asked in all seriousness, a worrying timbre lacing his voice.

"Yes, everything is- uhm..."

"For the love of Raziel, give me that!" Jace exclaimed in exasperation and grabbed the phone from Alec, putting it on speaker with one hand while holding Alec back with the other. "Hi, Magnus, it's Jace."

"Yeah, I guessed." Magnus said, slightly irritated as he tried to keep his worry in check. "What happened?"

"A lot of things; we almost died a couple times, fell down a lot of things, got chased by a lot of things but the worst is that we are stranded in an underground cave with no way up." Jace recited, ignoring Alec's low call of his name.

"Don't worry Magnus, we are both fine." Alec tried to reassure, but Jace was having none of it.

"Your boyfriend had a concussion and had lost his stele for a while." he informed the warlock, sending a glare at Alec when he tried to downplay the seriousness of the situation.

"Oh, Lilith." Magnus muttered. "Can you forward me your exact position? I'll get Clary and Izzy and come get you." Magnus said, waiting only for Jace's confirmation before ending the call.

"How do you get service down here?" Jace grumbled as he fiddled with Alec's phone and sent to Magnus their coordinates -or should he say _High Warlock Of My Heart_? He gave a dirty look at Alec, shaking his head fondly while muttering under his breath, "So whipped."

Alec blushed to the roots of his black hair before stuttering out a reply. "Magnus did a... _thing_ ," Alec explained absent-mindedly, making a vague gesture with his hand that was meant to imitate Magnus's magic movements but failed by at least a mile. "So we could reach each other just in case of need, so...." he ducked his head, rubbing the nape of his neck again in bashfulness. Looking through his thick eyelashes at his brother mulling the information.

"I can't fucking believe you!" Jace yelled when it dawned on him. "You mean to tell me, all this time you had perfect service because your warlock boyfriend is a worrywart?!" he exclaimed, shaking the phone in front of Alec's face who swallowed thickly and nodded. "Did he make it indestructible too?" Alec nodded again, making Jace throw his arms in the air and thump his head back in exasperation, throwing the phone at Alec's lap. "I can't believe you."

"I had forgotten! Sorry!" Alec exclaimed too. "Between the bee and the eagle and the damn bear I totally forgot I could use my phone because, believe it or not, it's a very recent change!"

"Oh my God." Jace sighed, letting a chuckle leave his lips.

"Yeah, tell me about it." Alec sighed as he sat back. "How is he going to find us? Will they have to ascend the mountain too?" Alec asked a little worriedly.

"Damned if I know." Jace shrugged, dragging his bottom lip between his teeth and nibbling on it in worry. "They will be fine." he said with conviction.

"Yeah, they better be."

 

*******

 

They didn't have to wait long before concerned calls of their names reached their ears.

"Down here!" they started yelling, getting carefully on the feet and going to stand right where the water licked the shore so they could look to the opening of the cave and the edge of the canyon. Dark figures standing right at the edge, framed by the dark blue of the sky and the billions upon trillions of stars.

"We're coming to get you, stay right where you are!" Clary shouted and vanished from their eyes as she took a step back with Magnus. The parabatai shared a funny look.

"Is she making fun of us?" Jace asked bemusedly.

"I hope so." Alec smirked before a thought striked his mind. "Hey! Be careful of the bear!" he shouted, in worry.

"What?" Izzy shouted back.

"The bear! There is a rabid bear!" he stressed, praying inside his head.

"There's no bear here!" Izzy informed them. "We haven't met anything coming here!"

"What?" Jace wondered taken aback.

"I know I should be happy about this but..." Alec gave his trademark weirded-out look, one eye narrowing slightly. "Doesn't this sound weird to you?"

Jace nodded in understanding, a frown settling on his golden features. "Very so."

They didn't have much time to ponder on it as an, obviously magically enhanced, rope fell over the edge and right into the water - no one had a rope this long handy. They started slowly making their way up, one after the other and collapsed onto the ground of the cliff once they had reached the top, thankful for finally getting out of the cave.

"Hi," Alec smiled goofily up at Magnus who went to stand over his head, hands poised on each side of his waist and frown settled on his handsome features as he looked down at his boyfriend. "Thank you for coming."

"Tell me Alexander, what word in the sentence _'in case of need or a life and death situation, don't hesitate to call me'_  you don't understand?" Magnus's voice was laced with worried anger, but still as smooth as ever, which was worse than actually yelling and cursing at Alec.

Alec gestured with one hand, swallowing dryly. He sent a helpless look at his parabatai, but found him busy hugging and reassuring Clary that everything was well. Alec met Magnus's eyes again. "Actually, I have a very good explanation about that."

Magnus rolled his eyes, small smile smoothing the hard line of his lips at his boyfriend's antics, before he sighed and stepped beside Alec, reaching out a hand to help him on his feet. He rested his hands on Alec's shoulders, leaning in for a light peck before taking a step back and assessing the whole of Alec with his brown eyes. "So, start talking." he said, not asking for permission before snapping his fingers, smirking amusedly at the surprised cry coming from both Jace and Alec when their clothes and shoes changed into new and dry ones from the Institute.

"Thank you, Magnus!" Jace bellowed, turning to grin at the warlock who shrugged it off with a flourished gesture of his hand.

"My pleasure, Blondie." Magnus turned to Alec, "Now you, explain." he demanded, folding his arms over his swede, petrol blue blazer.

Izzy crowded near, taking her brother in her arms when he started telling how their story had gone.

"Oh, this is why Jace never replied after sending the pictures of you all Goofy-like!"

"Goofy?" Alec inquired; raising an eyebrow, what about him all swollen up looked goofy to her?

"Yeah! Mickey Mouse's friend." she giggled taking her phone out of her leather jacket to show to Magnus, along with the video of Alec hanging upside down and then acting out a perfect landing.

Magnus smiled in good humour, but Alec could tell he was still worrying when, after watching both, he pushed the phone away and said to Isabelle, "Send them to me later, when I will be able to actually savor them." before turning to Alec expectantly for the rest of the story.

When Alec had finished, with various inputs from his brother, he was rubbing at his neck again, trying to explain to Magnus that he had totally forgotten of his new enhanced phone. "I'm so sorry! I'm just not used to it and when Jace complained about service, by power of habit I believed the same applied for my phone too." he smiled bashfully, watching as Magnus rolled his eyes and uncrossed his arms, looking at both Alec and Jace repeatedly before sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

"And you say you were chasing a demon all this time?" The parabatai nodded at the same time, like little children that got scolded for playing in the mud with their clean clothes." And what has this demon being doing?" Magnus pressured for more information.

Alec furrowed his eyebrows trying to remember the mission file from the Clave. "It didn't actually say in the report, just that it was disturbing the mountaineers and causing trouble."

"I didn't have Shadowhunters for people who did things like climb mountains for fun." Magnus snarked, making all four Shadowhunters laugh and shake their heads.

"They aren't usually, but only sometimes, when Shadowhunters need to come in contact with their inner caveman." Izzy supplied, smirking all the while.

"So you know what caused all this?" Clary asked.

Magnus sighed again, shaking his head in fond exasperation while he muttered about Shadowhunters and their incompetent schooling.

"Of course I do, Biscuit." he smirked coyly, making Alec roll his eyes and Jace cry out in exasperation. Magnus chuckled lightly.

"Would you be so kind and let us in on the joke?" Jace asked annoyed, staring fixedly at the warlock.

"Why, yes, I'd be."

"Magnus..." Alec sighed in tiredness, pleading with his eyes.

"Okay, okay, no need to use the puppy eyes, darling." Magnus made a waving motion with his hand at his boyfriend. "It's a trickster demon. Probably Abraxas, if I'm correct which I always am." Magnus smiled cockily, laughing when Jace threw his hands in the air.

"I swear, you two were made for each other!" he called out, recalling all the times his brother had said something similar that day.

"Ignore him, Magnus and do go on." Alec said, blushing lightly. Magnus winked at Jace, but continued on his explanation.

"His name comes from _Abracadabra,_  which is why a lot of people connect him with magic. Some believe he's a God. Others believe he's a trickster spirit that likes making people’s lives hard using various means. And if we take into consideration the day you two had, it's definitely him. You've been jinxed since the moment you stepped foot into these woods.” He pause for dramatic effect. “So instead of you chasing the demon, the demon was chasing you."

"So, what are we going to do?" Alec asked perplexed.

"You, my darling boy, will do nothing. None of you will." Magnus stated with conviction. "I have a friend who is intimately acquainted with this spirit, if I dare say." Magnus's eyes shone in mirth, "So, I'm going to pull some favours and have him deal with it by tomorrow."

They took it all in for a minute in silence. Jace sighed in relief and was opening his mouth to say something when Alec interrupted him.

"We can't leave a Clave mission to someone else. We have to get it done." Alec protested, flinching when an exasperated chorus of his name (both in short and full form) resonated through the woods.

Jace exchanged a look with Magnus before stepping forward and grabbing Alec's shoulder, staring right into his eyes. "Alec, my parabatai," he started, tightening the grip he had on Alec as he talked. "We are going home _right now_  or else I'm knocking you out and hauling your stubborn ass back myself." Alec opened his mouth to protest, but a squeeze of Jace's hand had him flinching in silence. "Are we clear?"

Alec glared at his brother, full lips pouting in annoyance. He wasn't a kid dammit! He just wanted to be a good leader. And his brother couldn’t tell him what to do!

"Alexander, it's the best we can do. Abraxas is a very powerful spirit and it can take a lot of forms just to play with your sanity." Magnus put in, going to stand beside Jace. Taking gently in his palms Alec's hand, thumbs rubbing soothing circles on the soft skin at the outside of Alec’s hand. "Everything you encountered today _was_  him, not only _because_  of him. The fact you survived, on its own is a miracle. Please let my friend handle this."

Alec's eyes flew between Jace's hard stare and Magnus's soulful one for a good moment before sighing and dropping his shoulders in defeat.

"Yeah, okay. Let's go home." he smiled lightly, tightening his long fingers around Magnus's hands.

And that was when everyone heard it.

A wet, God-forsaken huff that Alec and Jace were well acquainted with.

"Oh for fuck's sake!" the parabatai exclaimed at the same time.

"A portal! Hurry! Hurry!" Jace stressed, turning to Magnus who had already raised his fingers and was letting them spark while he moved his hands in a circular movement, making a glowing window appear before them.

"Everyone to the loft!" Alec ordered, grabbing Izzy's hand to drag her near him, while Jace did the same with Clary, jumping through the portal. Alec pushed Izzy in front of him to get through and grabbed for Magnus's hand, dragging him along, landing gracefully on the carpeted floor of the loft. Magnus snapped his fingers and the portal vanished behind them before the bear -Abraxas- could follow them.

They spent a moment looking at one another before Magnus clapped his hands and turned around with a flourish. "I guess Italian will have to wait. Not much for all of us. What do you guys think of Thai, instead?" he announced already snapping his fingers and conjuring menus in everyone's hands without waiting for a reply.

Alec and Jace's stomachs growling was the only reply needed. They both looked at one another and laughed, making the rest look at them funny.

"I could use a shower, until the food is here." Alec announced after a while, rubbing his hand over his dusty face and hair.

"Yeah, me too." Jace agreed, looking pleadingly at Magnus who shooed him with a motion of his hand.

"Don't look at me, Blondie, you know where the guest bathroom is. Now shoo, both of you."

 

*******

 

"Hey." Jace said after he had finished taking a bubble bath -because he damn well deserved it!- as he walked towards the couch Alec was reclining on. He had his head tilted in the palm of his hand while his arm was propped over the back of the leather couch, fresh from his shower.

"Hey." Alec mumbled, opening his eyes just the tiniest bit to look at his brother as he passed over his long legs resting on the small coffee table and came to flop on the couch beside him, letting his head hit the arm of the furniture gently and his bare feet to propel themselves over Alec's lap.

"So, I was thinking," Jace started, throwing a light punch at Alec's arm for the grumbling sound he made. "I was thinking" he parroted sending a tiny glare at his brother. "We should do this again." Jace finished, shrugging, unsure of what to expect from his brother, the wave of contentment and hope surging through the bond making him feel all giddy inside.

Alec smiled his trademark half-grin, hazel eyes meeting Jace's bicoloured ones in friendly amusement.

"You mean running for our lives?"

Jace chuckled softly, resting his head back and closing his eyes as he replied, "Aren't we already doing that almost every other day?" he asked in good humour, making Alec leave out a low laugh. "I meant ‘parabatai bonding time’. It should be a thing. That we do." Jace admitted, watching for Alec's reaction through slitted eyes.

Alec smiled softly, letting his head fall over the back of the couch, looking at the loft's ceiling. "It should be." his voice was gentle, laced with familial affection.

It felt so nice being able to relax after such a full day. Alec could almost feel the sweet tendrils of sleep reaching in his subconscious and pulling him under when a stray thought striked his mind, causing his closed eyes to snap open, looking at the ceiling in surprised revelation for a good minute before whispering reluctantly, “Hey, Jace…” Jace made an inquiring sound in the back of his throat that Alec took as his queue to continue, “uhm, correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t you have the ability to activate runes without a stele?”  
  
Jace’s head snapped up in attention, looking speechless at Alec for a couple minutes, blinking his eyes slowly as he stared at his brother. His mouth fell open slightly, a breathless _”oh”_  falling from his lips. Alec started full-on-out cackling, throwing his head back on the couch as full breathy laughs punched out of his chest. Loud chuckles followed after a while as Jace started laughing too at their idiocy.  
  
“Oh, Raziel.” Alec said breathlessly after a while, pushing with his wrist against his stomach as he calmed down slowly. “We are the worst.”  
  
 “Parabatai.” Jace shook his head slowly, letting it fall back again, low laughs still leaving his lips.

They stayed like that for a moment, both having their eyes closed as fatigue took slowly over them, not even bothering to open them when they heard a loud crash from the kitchen.

"Is it the damn bear, again?!" they shouted in unison, dissolving into fits of giggles right after, never noticing the three heads that popped out of the kitchen to look weirdly at the parabatai, like they had finally lost their minds.

 _Maybe it wasn't such a bad day, after all_ , Jace thought, smile curling his lips.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So, this was it! Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
